Paedophile Pair Found Guilty Of Killing Woman
5:51pm UK, Thursday June 10, 2010
James Matthews, Scotland correspondent
Two of the country's most dangerous paedophiles have been found guilty of killing a woman who was going to report their abuse of a young boy.
Charles O'Neill, 47, and William Lauchlan, 33, strangled 39-year-old Alison McGarrigle before dumping her body in the sea off Largs in Ayrshire.
5:51pm UK, Thursday June 10, 2010
James Matthews, Scotland correspondent
Two of the country's most dangerous paedophiles have been found guilty of killing a woman who was going to report their abuse of a young boy.
Charles O'Neill, 47, and William Lauchlan, 33, strangled 39-year-old Alison McGarrigle before dumping her body in the sea off Largs in Ayrshire.
Police initially believed that she had simply gone missing when she disappeared in 1998. In 2005, however, they declared her dead.
The breakthrough in the hunt for her killers came when they boasted about the murder.
Both Lauchlan and O'Neill had a history of abusing young boys. In 1998, they were jailed for abusing five youngsters.
Following their release, their child sex crimes continued - in Scotland and in Benidorm, where they had set up a cleaning business.
It was while they were abusing a boy in Ayrshire that Alison McGarrigle found out and threatened to tell the police.
Convicted paedophiles Charles O'Neill (left) and William Lauchlan
Detectives believe they strangled her in their flat, which she was sharing at the time, and then hid her body under rocks on Largs beach before putting it in a wheelie bin and dumping it at sea.
Despite repeated appeals for information and an extensive search of the seabed off Largs, no trace of Alison was ever found.
Police suspicions surrounding Lauchlan and O'Neill were never brought to court due to a lack of strong evidence.
Over the years, however, different witnesses heard them boast about having killed the single mother.
One man told the High Court in Glasgow how O'Neill said to him "she's feeding the fishes down there," and nodded towards the Firth of Clyde.
In Spain they told a man they knew that Ms McGarrigle had been "got rid of" and repeated she had been "fed to the fishes."
Allison McGarrigle, killed by two paedophiles she threatened to expose
In prison, O'Neill had told a fellow prisoner she had been "done away with."
Just weeks prior to their murder conviction, the pair were found guilty in a separate trial of grooming a six year-old boy for sex.
In the same trial, they were also convicted of abducting and sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy in Spain and O'Neill was convicted of drugging a 14-year-old boy and abusing him.
The judge in the murder trial, Lord Pentland, described the pair, who were lovers, as "evil, determined and manipulative paedophiles of the worst sort."
Both were given life sentences, with O'Neill to serve a minium of 30 years and Lauchlan a minimum of 26 years.
They were also jailed for 10 years each for the recent sexual abuse convictions.
Sentencing the pair, Lord Pentland said: "It is clear that you are both dangerous and determined predatory paedophiles and that you now represent a high risk to the safety of the public."
://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3009422/Life-for-murder-paedo-wanted-by-Maddie-tecs.html
